ANYmal D (industrial robot)

2021: Robot announcement for inspection of power and processing plants

At the end of April 2021, the Swiss company ANYbotics demonstrated a new industrial robot - ANYmal D. It can be used for inspections of industrial and energy companies.

The four-legged robot is taken to hard-to-reach places and checks the operation of the equipment - for example, it can detect overheating through a thermal imaging camera or unusual sounds (using a microphone) indicating possible problems in the system.

ANYmal D robot for inspection of power and processing plants

The robotic inspector is equipped with a lidar for panoramic viewing of the terrain and wide-angle color cameras that allow the robot to bypass obstacles and "navigate" in space. Once setting it a route and stopping points, the robot can continue to follow it and check the systems for malfunctions. If a problem is detected during a crawl, the walking robot sends a warning to the control room via Wi-Fi or LTE.

ANYmal D can operate in a wide temperature range (-20 to 500 ° C) and in the dark (for this there is a LED spotlight with a brightness of 3500 lumens). The manufacturer also notes the presence of a built-in computer with which the robot can perform tasks without connecting to the Internet. A camera with a built-in 20-fold zoom provides visual inspection of the mechanisms without the need to closely approach them.

The battery life of the device is one and a half hours. Before fully discharging the batteries, the robot independently returns to the charging station, where it needs to stay for about three hours to replenish the battery charge from 0 to 100%.

Initially, the development of the robot was started by engineers of the Technical University of Zurich (ETH Zurich), and only later it became a commercial product thanks to the efforts of ANYbotics.^[1]

Notes